


Predator, Prey

by crimson_violet



Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Angst, Blood and Injury, Gen, Moral Ambiguity, Possibly vaguely Carlisle/Edward, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts, Twilight Renaissance, Vampire Turning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-19 07:09:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29622531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crimson_violet/pseuds/crimson_violet
Summary: Carlisle turns each of his family members, and then angsts about it.
Relationships: Carlisle Cullen & Edward Cullen, Carlisle Cullen & Emmett Cullen, Carlisle Cullen & Esme Cullen, Carlisle Cullen & Rosalie Hale
Kudos: 4





	Predator, Prey

**Edward**

Carlisle sits on the edge of the young man's hospital bed and examines his feverish skin, unfocused gaze, and shallow breath. The scent of disease hangs thick in the air. Edward is dying. And Carlisle can't just let that happen. Save for them, the room is empty. It had once held Edward Masen's parents, and several others, but they'd died, one by one, even as Carlisle had worked tirelessly to save them. And now, they are alone. In the dead of night. He knows they won't be disturbed because no one else is foolish enough to enter this area of the hospital unless they must. The disease catches fast. And damn it all, but Carlisle is tired of watching them all die around them. He is being selfish here, and he knows it. But.

He leans forward, smoothes back the sweat-soaked copper strands of Edward's hair, and whispers gently into his ear.

"This is going to hurt a lot, I'm afraid, but I _promise_ you will survive it."

Carlisle's senses are sharp enough to catch Edward's swift intake of breath, a fraction of a second before he sinks his teeth into the human's neck, finding the pulsing vein there that will carry his venom straight to the other man's heart. The skin burns hot under his lips, and breaks terrifyingly easily - no feathers or fur to get in the way, he thinks. The sound of skin breaking and his teeth sinking into flesh (as they were supposed to do, were _made_ to do) fills his ears, and creates an instant of pure perfection. He has an excellent memory, and he knows that this will be burned into it forever, seared into his mind with the same ferocity as a brand against flesh. The feeling, the sound of prey being eaten. He buries that thought as deeply as he can. His mind screams for him to bite down harder, to take everything that he can, but that is a thought he puts from his mind quickly. Carlisle is _good_ at putting things from his mind. At resisting temptation. (Good at resisting some temptations at least. He tells himself that he's saving the man's life, but he knows that he's taking it. Taking it for his own.)

The blood inside Edward's skin burns hotter still, and it hits all of his senses at once, wiping everything else away. It is intoxicating, satisfying, beautiful, and his mind screams that this feels so, _so_ right, and that he should never stop. The hunger for it is a pain that courses through him, sudden and sharp. He knows this pain well, the burning in his throat and the clawing in his belly. He has had centuries of practice abstaining from this temptation, but never this close, never _this much_.

Blood courses through Edward's veins, and trickles from his newly opened wounds, and Carlisle can see that blood, can hear that blood, and absolutely can _not_ let that blood enter his mouth. His mouth waters with venom, and he waits until enough has entered Edward's bloodstream to turn him. If he were weaker he would shudder with the effort of not sinking his teeth further into flesh, not devouring the meal before him, not doing what every single one of his instincts are telling him to do. He has _control_ over himself, better control than anyone, possibly. But that can't stop his thoughts from racing. He still has the instincts of a predator.

He itches to just bite down _hard_ and tear a gaping wound in that delicate throat, and revel in the blood that flows from it-- No. He longs to tilt his head and lean in the fraction of an inch closer that it would take to put that steady trickle of blood upon his lips, upon his _tongue_ , dear _God_ \-- _No_. He pushes aside the thoughts, but that just makes them come sickeningly faster. He wants to do many terrible, unforgivable things, but he will _not_. He has not come this far and survived this long without it to just give in now. (He could drench the room in scarlet, if he wanted to.) He is in control of himself, but it is a relief to pull away once he has waited long enough. Edward is weak and limp and lifeless, and Carlisle steals him away to a room in his home before the venom truly starts to eat away at him. No one will miss the body. His parents have passed, and the hospital already has enough corpses to deal with. Carlisle sets him gently on the floor.

Edward starts to scream as the venom courses through his veins, eating him up from the inside out and turning him into something _other_. Carlisle braces him against the floor, keeping him from hurting himself. The scent of blood lingers in the air, much stronger to his senses now that the scent of sickness has been left behind at the hospital. His mouth waters again as he remembers how terribly close it had been. How close it still was. He tries to forget. He fails.

He holds Edward as the young man thrashes and has his humanity torn from him. He holds Edward and tries to forget temptation, but this is a hopeless endeavor. Carlisle watches the young man's eyes turn crimson, and see them fill with hunger too. Edward still looks pale, but no longer sick. No longer dying. No longer human. Carlisle feels regret, he feels guilt and worries that he might have made the wrong decision, as those wide eyes stare up into his own. He casts those feelings aside, and leaves them to fester with all of the other unwanted thoughts.

**Esme**

It's easier the second time, in some ways. Easier because he's done it before, easier because he isn't as lonely. Easier because it isn't premeditated. Carlisle hears a heartbeat in the morgue that _shouldn't be there_ , and drops everything to rush there to find her. A broken body. A familiar face, behind the damage. But somehow, still alive. (Still dying.)

He's alone there with her, and before he can even think about whether it's the right thing to do, he's biting at her neck. He needs to turn her. This bright young woman does _not_ deserve to be taken from the world. A bite to the neck isn't enough though, she's bleeding out instead of spreading the venom through her body. Beautiful, broken, fragile. Even Carlisle's sharp eyes have to strain in order to tell that she's breathing.

He bites her again, closer to the heart. The sound of it's weakly stuttering pulses fills his ears. The blood pumps through her (too slowly) and flows out of her (too quickly), and it's just red, red, red, everywhere he looks. He bites her several more times, in several more places, spread out over her body to give her the best chance that he can. Carlisle gathers the woman's broken body into his arms and runs. 

Had her name been Esme? That girl who's broken leg he'd set, that woman whose body seems far too light in his arms? It's hard to think, because he's running home with his mouth covered in her blood. He collapses there with her, and then all he can do is wait. He fears that he's failed, when her heartbeat slows to a gentle stop. But her eyes snap open and she screams a rattling, hissing wail of agony through her damaged throat and lungs, so. This is what success looks like.

It's worse than it was with Edward, because her pain is that much greater. Esme goes through all the physical pain of transforming into a vampire, but with her own emotional agony layered on top of it. It's hard for Carlisle to watch, but not as hard as it is for her to go through. Edward, he can tell, doesn't approve. (Has Edward ever even approved of _anything_?) Esme hadn't wanted to stay alive, she'd wanted to be dead and gone, and she certainly hadn't wanted to go through days of burning pain as she was turned into something that wasn't even human. Carlisle thinks that perhaps this was wrong. But. It can't be taken back now. They'll all have to learn to live with it.

Esme is glad for it, eventually. But it takes a _long_ time.

Esme kills several people by accident, loses control to the burning hunger and snaps. She feels terrible about it each time. (She wouldn't be responsible for deaths, if he hadn't turned her. _Carlisle_ wouldn't be responsible for those deaths, if he hadn't turned her.)

Edward leaves, spends several years stalking the streets, killing and eating those he finds to be truly evil. Carlisle misses him dearly and welcomes him back when he returns. (Who is Edward, to judge who is truly evil? How many lives had he taken? How many lives had he _saved_?)

**Rosalie**

Rosalie Hale's body he'd found broken and beaten and violated. The scent of blood and violence and unspeakable things had lead him to her. Left for dead, but somehow still alive. Alive, but fading rapidly. Carlisle pauses for a moment, to wonder if he _should_ , but. He is, as ever, selfish. He wants more family. He wants Edward to have more family, as the man still seems terribly, cripplingly lonely. He thinks, maybe this is the answer.

The scent of what's been done to poor Rosalie, what those men who left her here had _done_ , hangs around her. It would turn Carlisle's stomach, if that were still possible. (It wasn't. But he still feels sick, and he didn't even think _that_ was possible.) Her skin, once perfect, is marred. She is bruised, bloodied, and torn. To a human, irreparable damage. But Carlisle _could_ fix her, could make her skin smooth and her body whole again. (He can't. This is unfixable. Healing wounds isn't the same as _fixing_ things.)

He bites her neck, and the blood runs down it. One more bloodstain on her once-white dress doesn't look amiss. Rosalie howls like an animal (they _are_ all beasts), and Carlisle holds her, does his best to keep her quiet through the pain.

She kills the men who hurt her, of course. No one can fault her for that. She breaks their necks and disposes of their bodies with a cold and mechanical fury, and she isn't even _tempted_ to taste their blood. Not once. Carlisle thinks he might be envious of that. Rosalie, lip curled into a disgusted snarl, says that she's _better_ than their blood. That she's worth _more_ than that. She certainly is.

Rosalie _hates_ being a vampire. She didn't deserve any of this. Didn't deserve to be raped and tortured and killed, and didn't deserve to be turned into a monster. Carlisle swears it'll be the last time he turns someone. It won't.

**Emmett**

Rosalie runs to Carlisle with all of the inhuman speed that she possesses, and lays the body of a wounded man at his feet. She pleads with him, to turn the man, to save him. She doesn't trust herself to do it, she says. She wants the man, needs him. She's so lonely, she says. Carlisle has always been weak to loneliness, he can't say no to this. Apparently Rosalie is weak too.

Carlisle bites the man. Saves him. (Ends his life. Starts a new one.)

Time of death is marked by when the heart stops, so really, he's killing the man. Killing him to save him. Anaesthetic does nothing to soothe the pain: the venom burns through it in seconds.

The man, Emmett, doesn't mind being a vampire. He _loves_ Rosalie. But. Emmett is strong, stronger than any of them. And he loses control. Emmett kills more people than Esme did. Some were accidents, but some were… not. Carlisle knows that all of them were his own fault, for turning Emmett at all. Rosalie agrees with that assessment - it's his fault she has to live like this too.

Carlisle picks up as many shifts at as many hospitals as he can without arousing suspicion. He tries to save as many lives as he can. To make up for the lives lost because of him. (Nothing can really make up for that. The two things aren't comparable.)

Carlisle had tried to kill himself. A long time ago, when he was new to being a vampire, and he'd found it impossible. So he'd learned to live with it. He'd since learned that it was possible, that vampires could be killed. And yet he still lived. It would have been difficult, but possible, to do it to himself, before he'd turned any of them. It would be easy, to ask Rosalie to do it now. He doesn't, because at his heart, he's a selfish creature.

He swears to himself that _this_ will be the last time he turns someone. Especially without their consent.

It probably won't be.


End file.
